The occasional failures of the complicated arrangements of straps, tape and pasties which allow the more revealing costumes to be cosplayed in relative safety in public seem to have been the subject of unprecedented scrutiny at Comiket 84…

I'm actually kind of let down here. I just got back from Otakon. With only ~5% of the attendance comapred to this (and fewer days), a number of the cosplays were better done than these. And these are some of the best ones I've seen of the event. Maybe I set my expectations for Comiket too high.

Also, I'm 110% for sexy cosplays, but some of these people really need to learn about undergarments - top and bottom. There's a reason "zettai ryouiki" is so popular - it's about the mystery.

I don't know why, but Asians just cannot pull off blond hair. Whether its bleached or a wig, it just does not work for them, cosplay or not. Anime, you can get away with it, but real life? It works better on people of African descent than on Asians.

Not being racist or anything, just pointing out that whenever I have seen an Asian with blond hair (like some of the above pics show), it just looks weird. Honestly, the green and pink hair colors look better than blond.

They're not bad...but they aren't what they used to be and western society has caught up. Despite being incredibly smaller in popularity and experience, they're making & displaying similar, if not better, cosplays.

Where has the west caught up? All i ever see are fat Naruto characters, or everyone around a really ugly girl that is showing off cleavage. The only good ones in the U.S. are the already ametueur models just doing it for exposure.

It does have a stigma, sure. However, anime & manga are much more popular overall. Being an otaku is frowned upon (yet has a alrger subculture than the west), but it's usually acceptable to have a few anime or manga likes even into adulthood. That's much less common in western cultures - only a very small percentage of people my age or older have an active anime or manga series that they are following.

Anyway, I would say there are less cosplayers overall. Summer Comiket alone had over half a million people in attendance, with a hefty portion participating in cosplay. From a strictly anime/manga standpoint, there's no way for USA to compare cosplayers even if you combined all cons into one. Comic Con and such may make it a much closer comparison, but that's still comparing it to only a single event in Japan (and Comiket is twice a year).